Two Michigan teachers will finally be allowed to end their union membership in the Michigan Education Association and will be refunded any dues they paid during this school year, according to a settlement agreement signed this week.

William “Ray” Arthur, a teacher and wrestling coach at Petoskey Senior High School, and Miriam Chanski, a Coopersville kindergarten teacher, tried to quit the teachers’ union after Michigan adopted legislation to become the 24th right-to-work state in the U.S.

Sharyl Attkisson, a CBS News investigative journalist who has been active in covering the aftermath of the Benghazi terror attacks and the Fast and Furious scandal, announced Monday that she had resigned from the network.

The AirCam is the greatest airplane ever because it will allow flying you simply cannot do in any other airplane. It's a twin-engine
ultralight designed for use by National Geographic to explore Africa.

It can fly 10 feet above the tree tops in safety as it can, with no
engine management challenge, climb up and away on one engine. Such
near-Earth exploration is not done in twin-engine GA planes,
ultralights or any other aircraft, with the same level of assurance.

AirCams can take off on one engine, easily, and with both Rotax 912's turning, leap off terra firma in less than 100 feet and climb 2,000
fpm at Vne, all while burning only 4 gph. Try all that in any other aircraft!

From Philly.com On Monday morning, Upper Darby police posted images of the suspects to their popular Twitter and Facebook accounts. On Monday night, the parents of two of the boys brought their children to Upper Darby police headquarters for questioning after seeing their sons’ images all over social media, Chitwood said. “One set of parents were very cooperative” he said. “The other set brought him in because they knew it was him on the social media page.”

You broke it, you fix it, is the message from famed neurosurgeon and outspoken conservative leader Dr. Ben Carson to Americans who don’t like the way their country is moving.

Carson was interviewed recently by Joseph Farah, WND’s co-founder, editor-in-chief and CEO, on a wide range of subjects from faith to guns, from corruption to the presidency, from racism to the Constitution and from elections to Obamacare.

The founding documents of the country, and in fact, its beginning, were fine, he said.

“If you go back and look at what the original intent was, it was for a government for, of and by the people, not for, of and by the government,” he said. “In fact, our Constitution is designed to keep the government from becoming too big … .”Read More

On Sunday, March 9, 2014, the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to the area of Mt. Olive Church Rd Snow Hill, MD. for a suspicious vehicle parked in the roadway. Upon arrival they observed a 2004 Chevrolet Suburban parked at the stop sign at Mt. Olive Church Rd and Snow Hill Rd. The Suburban was parked with no head lights illuminated and engine running.

Deputies observed an adult male, later identified as Calvin Henry Harmon, Jr., 32 years of age from Salisbury, MD, passed out behind the wheel.

Deputies detected an odor of an alcoholic beverage emanating from the passenger compartment of the vehicle and on Harmon’s breath. Deputies asked Harmon to exit the vehicle to perform some sobriety tasks, to which Harmon agreed. Based on Harmon’s performance of the sobriety tasks, Deputies placed him under arrest for DWI. A subsequent search of Harmon’s vehicle revealed a set of brass knuckles. Harmon was also charged with a carrying a concealed weapon.

Harmon appeared before a District Court Commissioner and was released on his own recognizance pending trial.

Why Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett is being called 'the de facto president'

Suppose you were a committed leftist revolutionary who somehow got elected president of center-right America.

Suppose you were great at making speeches, but little else. You masked your socialist agenda in the appealing rhetoric of fairness and justice, but secretly loathed the American system of constitutional government and free-market capitalism.

Suppose you were also an extreme narcissist with an absurdly grandiose view of yourself and almost no tolerance for criticism and disagreement. Your ego so fragile, your worldview so distorted, your mind so angry beneath your charismatic exterior, and your self-image of being a divinely gifted leader in danger of disintegrating in the light and heat of mounting geopolitical turmoil and your own stunning failures as president.

The father of Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza said in his first interview about the massacre that what his son did couldn't "get any more evil" and he wishes his son hadn't been born.

In his most extensive comments since the shooting, Peter Lanza described his struggle to comprehend the actions of his son, who killed his mother then gunned down 20 children and six educators at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December 2012.

Lanza also told The New Yorker magazine in a series of interviews last fall that he believes Adam would have killed him, too, if he had the chance. And he often contemplates what he could have done differently in his relationship with Adam, although he believes the killings couldn't have been predicted.More

Five-year-old Jake Owen played a video game in the back seat of the car as his family sat in Baltimore traffic. He excitedly announced, “Mom, I have 42 lives!” Then an SUV slammed into the sedan.

Devin X. McKeiver, 23, was using a cellphone when he rear-ended the car. He didn’t hit the brakes. The impact killed Jake.

Had McKeiver been drunk, he could have faced jail time. Instead, with his lawyer arguing at trial that McKeiver was doing something that everyone does, he was fined $1,000.

Now Jake’s family and others are asking Maryland lawmakers to increase penalties for drivers who cause crashes while talking or texting on a handheld phone. The bill, known in Annapolis as “Jake’s Law,” also would require “distracted drivers” involved in serious crashes to give police basic information about their cellphones, so detectives can more quickly check what they were doing at the moment of impact.

Maryland, one of the bluest of blue states, is the poster child demonstrating that taxing the rich fails to balance the state budget.

Yet Democrats, who have complete monopoly control on all branches of state government, continue to think that doing the same thing over and over will lead to a different result.

Because of its proximity to Washington, D.C., Maryland is one of the wealthiest states in America. Still, it is plagued by fiscal woes. In a vain attempt to eliminate Maryland’s structural deficit, the administration of Gov. Martin O'Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown has raised taxes, tolls and fees more than 80 times since 2007, while increasing overall government spending by $9.6 billion, or 32 percent, over the same period.

This oppressive tax-and-spend climate is hurting Maryland’s families and forcing many of them to leave the state.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – What is wrong with the people who don’t understand why conservatism works, and why liberty is so important?

Even with a doctorate in human development, WND’s Gina Loudon was puzzled.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., had the answer to her question.

“I tell people it’s the ‘big heart, small brain syndrome.’ Liberals have big hearts, but they’re not using all their brain capacity,” explained the senator in his exclusive interview with WND at CPAC, the annual convention for conservatives, just outside of Washington.Read More

The Obama administration is forging ahead with plans to overhaul the nation's poultry inspection program despite major concerns from Congress, public interest circles and government officials.

President Obama’s 2015 budget, unveiled last week, contains millions of dollars worth of projected savings attributed directly to regulations that would remove some federal inspectors from poultry plants and allow the industry to speed up production lines.

Critics decry the proposal, which would shift some inspection duties to plant employees, as harmful deregulation. Dubbing the proposal the “filthy chicken rule,” they are imploring the administration to consider potential impacts to food and worker safety.

“This proposed rule would let the fox guard the hen house, at the expense of worker safety and consumer protection,” a coalition of more than 100 advocacy groups wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Obama.

KEY LARGO, Fla. (AP) -- The crisis in Crimea didn't keep President Barack Obama from forging ahead with a weekend getaway with his wife and daughters in the Florida Keys. But it's more than the Oval Office that will be dark as Russia's incursion into Ukraine reaches its one week mark. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife are vacationing in the Virgin Islands.

On Friday, China complained to North Korea when one of its missiles crossed paths with a civilian jet last Tuesday that had departed Tokyo’s Narita airport en route to the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang. Could a missile have taken down the Malaysian passenger plane?

President Obama wants the US to sign on to the UNs International Criminal Court (ICC), which would allow the UN's ICC to arrest and try US troops for War Crimes, without the legal protections guaranteed under US Law, and from which there is no appeal. I helped the Bush Administration block this repeatedly, while I was at the UN..

States are using what critics call a "perverse" legislative maneuver to partly undo congressional cuts to food stamps, despite efforts by some U.S. lawmakers to stop it.

The Washington Post reported Monday that three states so far are finding a way to avoid or minimize the cuts. The bill passed by Congress last month was supposed to save $8.6 billion over the next decade in food stamps. But New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania have figured out how to trigger additional spending anyway.

The trick, as many states have discovered, is for them to devote a relatively modest amount of funding to home-heating assistance. Under the law, states that give a certain amount to families could then qualify those families for additional food stamp money. More

Very few attended a panel discussion on gun control in Austin, Texas yesterday even though the event was heavily promoted by media, proving once again the popularity of the Second Amendment and basic human freedoms as a whole.

Key leaders from the three largest gun control groups – Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Americans for Responsible Solutions and Moms Demand Action – not only organized the event but also spoke to the handful in attendance who occupied at most 10% of the available seats.

This despite the fact that the panel discussion was a registered event of South by Southwest, an internationally-known set of film, interactive and music festivals and conferences that takes place every spring in Austin with an attendance of at least 100,000 from across the world.

You might be inclined to think that the Lone Star state is bad at creating good jobs. It is, after all, second only to Idaho in the proportion of its population earning the federal minimum wage or less, according to the Labor Department. And it has the ninth-highest Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality. So it’s only natural to assume that the state is bad at adding good jobs, right? Wrong.

Texas experienced stronger job growth than the rest of the nation from 2000 to 2013, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Not only that, a pair of researchers note in a Thursday research publication, but Texas leads the nation in creation of jobs at all pay levels, too.

“Texas has also created more ‘good’ than ‘bad’ jobs,” they write. “Jobs in the top half of the wage distribution experienced disproportionate growth. The two upper wage quartiles were responsible for 55 percent of net new jobs. A similar pie chart cannot be made for the rest of the U.S., which lost jobs in the lower-middle quartile over the period.”More

The one-two finish of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz in The Washington Times/CPAC straw poll over the weekend cemented their rock star status among grass-roots activists — and signaled that the two tea party favorites are destined for a showdown over which senator will carry the conservative flag in the contest for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

For the second straight year, Mr. Paul was easily the top choice of the thousands who converged for the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference just outside the Beltway in suburban Maryland, underscoring the power of the libertarian wing of the movement.

Mr. Cruz, meanwhile, showed that his star is on the rise among this pool of conservatives, as he climbed up the standings from a year ago to finish a distant second. More

A federal inspector general is launching a review into what went wrong with Maryland's health insurance exchange, the first examination focused specifically on how millions of dollars in federal money was spent by the state, according to the lawmaker who requested the probe.

Rep. Andy Harris, a Baltimore County Republican and vocal opponent of President Barack Obama's health care law, said officials with the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had contacted him and indicated they will look into the creation of the state's glitch-prone exchange.

The probe, which Harris said would likely begin in a matter of weeks, is the first of its kind to be revealed publicly. It comes days after the U.S. Government Accountability Office said it would review the formation of state-based insurance exchanges — though experts say an inspector general's examination is usually more exhaustive and specific.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rarely do you get to witness a battle with the line between right and wrong so clearly drawn. The Maryland House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Fourth Amendment Protection Act afforded such an opportunity. One one side, everyday Americans yearning to stop the violations of their rights and the rights of others. On the other side, those concerned only about advancing their own self-interest, and who care nothing about the principles trampled in the process. Following is the story of that hearing. It will take you behind the curtain into a drama most never see play out. It will make you cheer. It will make you scream. But in the end, you will clearly see the triumph of good ideas over evil.

The air was already thick with tension in room 100 of the Maryland House Office Building as the Fourth Amendment Protection Act came before the House Judiciary Committee.

Earlier, Del. Michael Smigiel went off on a panel of state prosecutors and law enforcement officials who essentially testified that warrants hinder catching bad guys. One law enforcement official said “I’m not totally against warrants…” But he opposed a requirement that police obtain a warrant before tracking cellphone locations, or using drones to monitor people. He went on to argue that requiring a warrant would allow pedophiles to stalk Maryland children and terrorists to indiscriminately blow up buildings.

Jon Bowne investigates the mass amnesia associated with the indisputable connection between the Ku Klux Klan and the Democratic Party as well as its long history of murder, torture and voting coercion:

On 7 March 2014 at 1:30 PM a deputy arrestedRyan Thomas Powell, 30 of Salisbury, on a Circuit Court Bench Warrant. The warrant was issued after Powell failed to appear for a violation of probation hearing in a CDS Possession with the Intent to Distribute case. Powell was detained without bond.

Ryan Thomas Powell

On 8 March 2014 at 4:00 PM a deputy arrestedMatthew Mark Gray, 31 of Salisbury, on a Circuit Court Bench Warrant. The warrant was issued after Gray violated the terms of his probation in an Assault 2ndDegree case. Gray was detained on a bond of $5,000.00.

WEST OCEAN CITY — The Worcester County Sheriff’s Office late Sunday recovered badly decomposed human remains from a ditch in a marshy area in South Point in the same general area where a local woman went missing last Memorial Day.

Somewhere around 6-6:30 p.m. on Sunday, a waterman working in the area of South Point discovered the mostly submerged and badly decomposed remains in a mosquito ditch in a marshy area and contacted the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office. Worcester County Sheriff’s Deputies responded a short time later and began the process of recovering the remains. The remains were collected and transported to Office of the State Medical Examiner for positive identification, a process that could take as many as three weeks.

Guest Speaker:Michael Anthony Peroutka, a former Presidential candidate & co-founder of Institude on the Constitution. For more than 13 yrs. he has presented theFounders' American View of Law and Government to thousands of Americans in all 50 states."There is a God, our rights come from Him, and the purpose of Government is to secure our rights!"

Finally, a dose of common sense in the swirl of hysterical hype and fear-mongering by environmental groups over the proposed liquid natural gas export project at Cove Point in Southern Maryland.

If you listen to the protesting greenies, this $3.8 billion project by the large energy company Dominion will send natural gas prices higher, promote the use of dirty energy sources like oil and coal, pollute the Chesapeake Bay, pollute Maryland’s air, worsen global warming and encourage more shale-oil fracking.

Few of those assertions have much credence. Some are bald-faced, and intentional, twisting of the truth.

Across the country today, schools and school nutrition personnel are celebrating National School Breakfast Week, an opportunity to shine a light on the importance of school breakfast and its role in preparing our students to learn each morning. In Maryland, while we have made record investments in our public schools and worked to ensure that our educators are prepared to teach students to succeed in a 21st Century economic climate, this week also serves as an important reminder that all of those efforts are for nothing if we are unable to meet one of a child’s most basic needs: proper nutrition.

When the O’Malley-Brown Administration launched the Partnership to End Childhood Hunger in Maryland in 2008, we did so because we believed that it was within our capacity and our compassion as Marylanders to ensure that no child goes hungry in this state. Recognizing that hunger can manifest itself in our youngest citizens in so many different ways, including in our classrooms, we have implemented a variety of strategies to increase school breakfast participation in an effort to ensure that children who may arrive at school without eating breakfast at home are still equipped to succeed.

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Governor O'Malley and Lt. Governor Brown issued the following joint statement in response to the floor vote in House of Delegates to increase Maryland's minimum wage to $10.10:

"I want to thank Speaker Busch and Chairman Davis for their leadership, and members of the House of Delegates for their vote to increase the minimum wage to $10.10. Nobody who works full time should have to raise their family in poverty," said Governor Martin O'Malley. "Raising the minimum wage makes good business sense: when workers have more money, businesses have more customers, growing our economy in a way that works. Twenty-one other states and the District of Columbia have a minimum wage higher than Maryland. As one of the top states for upward economic mobility, it’s time to give Maryland workers a raise. We urge the Senate to join the House -- let’s work together to increase the minimum wage to $10.10.”

"Today, the House of Delegates voted in favor of Maryland’s working families, ensuring that more of our neighbors will have the opportunity to get ahead and build a better future for their children,” said Lt. Governor Anthony Brown. “I look forward to working with the leadership and members of the Senate, along with advocates and business leaders, to raise the minimum wage which will support our workers and a strong, growing economy."

'A political firestorm fueled by their hatred of an opposing ideology'

(Fox News) Rutgers University professors and students are crying foul over the school’s decision to invite former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to speak at this year’s commencement ceremony.

Rutgers’ New Brunswick Faculty Council passed a resolution last week calling on the university’s board of governors to rescind its invitation to Rice, who will receive $35,000 and an honorary doctorate for the speech, The Star-Ledger reported.

The resolution said Rutgers should not honor Rice because of her role in the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s policy of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” such as waterboarding, the report said.

Attempts to keep the practice secret, even from judges, is raising questions as to just how prevalent police spying is within the Sunshine State.

The controversy stems from the arrest of James L. Thomas, a criminal suspect believed to be in possession of a stolen phone. Tallahassee police located and arrested Thomas by tracking a cell phone signal, then promptly searched his home.

We have long been pounding the table (certainly since mid-2012) that the US labor market has become a place where mostly older workers - those 55 and over - are hirable - something which has nothing to do with demographics, and everything to do with excess worker slack, and an employer's market to pick and chose those workers that are most qualified for a job since older workers have the same wage leverage as younger ones: none. February was merely the latest confirmation of just this.

The chart below shows the age breakdown of the various age groups of workers hired in the past month. The vast majority, or 239K of the job gains(according to the Household survey), once again fell into the oldest group, those aged 55-69. The core demographic, those 25-54, rose by a negligible 29K. Everyone else, i.e., those 16-24, saw a total of 153K in job losses.

As we showed moments ago, the scariest chart of today's nonfarm payroll report was the plunge in average weekly earnings. For those curious why US workers are unable to make any headway in obtaining higher wages, the following breakdown of just where the 175,000 (seasonally adjusted, because apparently now seasonal adjustments work again) February job gains were should provide some color.

Unfortunately, as has been the case for the past several months, well over half the total job gains in February were in industries that pay the least.

To wit:Education and Health: +33KLeisure and Hospitality: +25KTemp Help Services: +24KGovernment: +13K

Georgia legislature: 'Enough is enough,' calls for restraints on Washington

The plan to put the brakes on Washington’s expansion of the federal government is under way.

Convention of States confirmed that the Georgia legislature on Thursday passed the organization’s application “to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.”

State Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon, told the organization he is “pleased that the Georgia legislature has given voice to the frustrations of millions of Georgians.”

“Enough is enough. It is time to impose fiscal and other restraints on our runaway federal government. We urge other states to join us,” said Macon, the primary sponsor of the resolution.

“We Georgians have become the hope of the nation today,” said Jacqueline Peterson, the Georgia state director for the Convention of States Project. “Many thanks to our state legislators for standing for liberty. May God bless us, every single one!”

For Democrats, anyone who disagrees is a racist — even other Democrats.

When seven Democratic senators voted with all of the Republicans to reject Debo Adegbile’s nomination to serve as head of the Justice Department’s civil-rights division, Harry Reid cried racism. It’s as if Reid was on autopilot, and the aide who usually touches his elbow to correct him wasn’t available. If the aide had been there, he would have whispered “Um, senator, you’re accusing your own side of racism.”

Reid, who demolished the filibuster rule exactly to smooth votes such as the one on Adegbile, was flustered and discombobulated after the vote, so much so that he left the chamber and babbled into the microphones without thinking. Adegbile had been rejected, the majority leader explained, because “he stood for civil rights” and “Republicans have done everything they can, for a number of years now, to stop people from voting, changing early voting hours, changing where people can vote . . . ”

Third Reading Calendar (House Bills) #15

Special Order Calendar

HB-240 is a bill which will place mandates on local government as it relates to recycling numbers when it comes to waste disposal. This centralized approach is going to cost Marylanders when county governments will have to change policies to meet set goals by the state. Interestingly enough, it was also highly opposed by many environmental groups who objected to some of the burning standards attached to the bill. While most republicans voted no, we were also joined by several democrats. Sadly, the bill was not defeated.

HB-740 involves another infusion of state money into cyber security efforts to encourage more of these companies to come to Maryland. This is truly crony capitalism in that it favors and promotes one type of business over every other business in the state. In fact, this is one sector of our economy that is growing and thriving on its own and does not need additional incentives. The vote was along party lines with the republicans voting against this type of favoritism.